Wearily, he scuttled away from the brook and started to get to his feet, without success. He remained kneeling, staring at the quivering tips of his fingers, smelling the warm morning air and listening to the singing of the untroubled birds, and finally slumped forward, face down in the fertile soil, and slept. He had been awake almost fifty hours. * * * * * Later, Kesley felt gentle hands slide under his body and scoop him up. Foggily, he opened one eye and fought to focus it. Deep in his mind, he was struggling toward wakefulness, acutely aware he should flee but unable to make his exhausted body respond. "Let go of me," he murmured, clawing fitfully at the hands that held him. He blinked. "Where are the hounds? Don't let the hounds near me." "There are no hounds," a purring voice told him. "Winslow's men turned back hours ago." Some of the cobwebs cleared from his brain. "No hounds? You're not from Winslow?" "Look at me and see." The hands released him and slowly Kesley turned. Standing behind him, arms extended uneasily in case Kesley should topple, was a graceful, seal-like creature with glistening, golden-brown skin. A slit-like mouth was bent into a clumsy smile; narrow yellow eyes gazed warmly at him. "I'm ... very tired," Kesley said. The mutant nodded gently. "You should be," he said. He took a step forward, and caught the exhausted Kesley just as he began to fall. IX Sanctuary--for a while. "So I'm not to be allowed any rest," Kesley said bitterly. "Three days here and you're tossing me out, is that it?" He glared sourly at the little group of mutants facing him. "Well?" "You've been here three days," Spahl pointed out. The seal-like mutant shrugged sadly. "That's three days longer than any non-mutant's ever spent in this city, Kesley. We can't keep you here much longer." "Why do you want to stay here?" asked Foursmith, an angular, knobby-looking mutant with a row of inch-long red nubbins protruding through the flesh of his back. "You've got to get going, you know. Daveen's not here." "I don't know _where_ Daveen is!" Kesley said. "Can't you let me catch my breath?" "You'll have to leave tomorrow," Spahl said. "We'll give you a horse." "Thanks." This was the third day since Spahl had rescued him in the forest and brought him to Mutie City; they had fed him and rested him, but now they insisted that he leave. He couldn't blame them; the city was a refuge for harried mutants, not a harbor for escaped turncoats. They ran the risk of incurring Winslow's displeasure by giving him sanctuary. Yet, he thought, as long as they'd admitted him they might as well have let him stay long enough to get his bearings, to have some of the furor over him die down. Well, at least they'd taken him in. A small blessing, but a real one.